Marcus kept his expression very carefully neutral and did not look at Elena. Tell her that's not relevant. She says to tell you she's praying for you. Ranata said, "Ranata, she's seven, Marcus. She learned about praying at school last week and she's using it on everything.
I'll have her back by noon tomorrow. " The call ended. Marcus put his phone back down. Elena was watching him with the specific expression of someone who has successfully not smiled at something. She's praying for you, Elena said. Apparently, your 7-year-old is praying for your dinner.
"Can we talk about something else? " I think that might be the best thing I have ever heard in my life. Elena said, and she was laughing again. And Marcus was laughing. And for a moment, brief and startling and real, the diner felt like the right-sized room again. The way it used to feel when they were young, and the world was enormous and terrifying and somehow still manageable because they were in it at the same time.
The laughter faded the way good things do, not disappearing, just settling, Elena looked at the table, ran her thumb along the edge of her coffee mug. "I'm going to talk to Briana," she said. Quiet, decided, not asking Marcus' opinion on the matter. "Okay," he said. "That's not about you," she said.
That's about me needing to understand why someone who was supposed to love me chose to. She stopped. Started again. I've had people in my life make choices about my life without asking me. Choosing the road over home.
You leaving, even though I understand now it wasn't the choice I thought it was. But I let myself get used to it. I let myself get used to people making the call on my behalf. And I'm done with that. "That sounds right," Marcus said.
"I'm not asking for your validation," she said. Not unkindly. Just clearly, "I know," he said. I meant it as agreement, not validation. She studied him.
You've been doing therapy, she said. He blinked. "How did you—" Nobody naturally understands the difference between agreement and validations unless someone has drilled it into them professionally. Marcus was quiet for a moment. Started 2 years ago, he said.
Zoe's pediatrician recommended it. Said I needed to take care of myself. I I could take care of her. I went in thinking I was going to learn parenting strategies and apparently I had a lot of other things to work through. "That's brave," Elena said simply.
"It was uncomfortable. " "Most brave things are," she said. They sat for a moment with that. Outside the dark had fully settled over Cedar Falls. The diner light inside was warm and low. The after-dinner crowd had thinned to a few scattered tables.
Their pie plates had long been empty. The coffee had been refilled twice by the 19-year-old waitress, who had given up pretending not to be curious about table 7 and was now openly clocking them every time she passed. "I should probably get going," Elena said. "But she didn't move. " "Yeah," Marcus said. He didn't move either.
"This was not what I expected tonight to be," she said. "What did you expect? " She considered it. "Closure," she said. I think I expected closure. I think I invited you here so I could have one actual conversation with you that answered enough questions that I could finally file the Marcus Reed chapter of my life under resolved and move on.
And instead, she looked at him directly. Instead, I find out my cousin sabotaged 15 years of my life and that you tried to call me and that the boy I thought abandoned me was actually sitting in a hospital waiting room trying to reach me. And I don't, she exhaled. I don't have closure. I have about 17 more questions than I started with and a very complicated feeling about sweet potato pie now.
"I'm sorry," Marcus said. "For which part? " "All of it," he said., "I know I couldn't control what Briana did. I know the night happened the way it happened, but I'm sorry I didn't try harder to find you after. When I left Cedar Falls, I was ashamed. I was ashamed of leaving.
Ashamed of how I left, and shame made it easier to stay gone than to come back and face what I'd done. " Elena nodded slowly like she was filing that away. "I appreciate you saying that," she said. Careful, honest, but Marcus said, but saying it was hard doesn't explain 15 years of silence. No, he agreed. It doesn't.
She nodded again, picked up her jacket, paused before putting it on. There's a community thing, she said. Next Saturday, Cedar Falls safe streets initiative. The department puts it on every year. Cookout, kids games, community outreach.
I'm coordinating it. A pause. Kesha's going to be there. She loves it. There's a bounce house and last year she stayed in it for 45 consecutive minutes.
Marcus looked at her. 45 minutes is impressive. He said it really is. Elena said she has tremendous commitment. He understood what he was being told and what he was not being told.
And the distance between those two things was exactly the right amount of space for a man who had already pushed his luck considerably tonight. "Zoe loves bounce houses," he said. "Does she? " Elena said. She has tremendous commitment too. He said Elena put on her jacket.
"Saturday, noon. Cedar Falls Community Center on Fifth. " She stood up. He stood up. They were standing across from each other in the aisle of Plet's Diner. Two adults who had navigated an absolutely extraordinary Thursday evening and arrived on the other side of it still upright, which felt like a significant achievement.
Marcus, she said, "Yeah, I'm not the girl from high school anymore. " She said, "I need you to see who I am now, not who you remembered, not who you feel guilty about leaving, who I actually am right now in this life, carrying what I'm carrying. " "I know," he said. "I'm not 17 either. I know you're not," she said. "That's what I'm figuring out. " She walked toward the door. At the last moment, she turned back, hand on the door handle.